


fast, thorough, sharp as a tack

by gsparkle



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Competition, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 11:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19004998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gsparkle/pseuds/gsparkle
Summary: Natasha likes getting a rise out of Hill when nobody else can. She likes calculating the slope of Hill’s scowl from across the cafeteria, and the delicate curl of her pale hands when Natasha’s name pushes hers off the record board. She likes the way Hill sights her target like there’s nothing else in the world, but then smiles at Natasha with all her teeth, like a shark. She likes--She just likes to win, that's all.





	fast, thorough, sharp as a tack

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catsarecutebutaliens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catsarecutebutaliens/gifts).



> This was fun! Title from Cake's "Short Skirt / Long Jacket." Thanks as always to **santiagoinbflat**.

Objectively, it’s Clint’s fault.

“Hey,” he says to Natasha one day as they jog around the track. “Check it--somebody just beat your record.”

Natasha scoffs. “Stop trying to distract me,” she laughs. “I know you’re just trying to put me off my mile pace.”

She feels more than sees Clint roll his eyes. “Are _all_ Russians this full of themselves, or is it just you?”

“Oh, all of us,” she cheerfully replies--but, hold on: are they actually taking her name down from the record board? Are they--is she _really_ supposed to believe that _Maria Hill_ beat her 50 meter pistol score? She stops mid-stride and glares at Clint. “Hill? Really?”

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” he says, finally jogging back when he realizes she’s stopped. “Hill’s--I mean, she’s intense. A little scary, if you ask me--like, but not scary like _you’re_ scary, of course--”

He goes on, but Natasha isn’t listening; she’s watching _Maria Hill_ push _Natasha Romanoff_ off the record board, her eyes steadily narrowing.

\---

“Romanoff,” Hill says, not even pausing as she sweeps past Natasha’s desk. “My office. Now. Shut _up_ , Barton,” she adds when a distinctly childish _ooooh_ starts up on the other side of the cubicle.

Natasha flips Clint off, waits thirty seconds, then slides into Hill’s office. She’s been expecting this for a week now; even still, her nerves thrill on every step, and her lips won’t lay flat. “You wanted to see me, Deputy Director?” she asks, her poker face failing completely.

There are two flags of color high on Hill’s pale cheeks. “You think this is funny,” she asks, only Maria Hill never puts question marks at the end of her questions, just snaps her eyes like cold blue lightning. Another not-question: “I assume there’s a reason why you’ve overturned all my rifle records.”

Natasha shrugs, examining her hands. She hadn’t shot a rifle in a while; it’s surprising how easily calluses build back up. “It’s my understanding that records get overturned all the time.”

Really, it’s admirable how Hill bites back whatever caustic thing clearly rises first to her tongue, and instead just sighs. “Look, Romanoff, if this is about your pistol record, then…”

Natasha looks up from under her brows. Against the picture window of her office, Hill is edged in searing white brightness, and for a second Natasha suspects that she’s being petty, stupid, and highly childish.

Then Hill meets her eyes and grins, a cat picking feathers from her teeth. “Then you can come and get it.”

\---

It turns out the agent in charge of maintaining the record board has other priorities besides changing out the top score twice a week. “I’m just leaving you both up,” she huffs. “Alphabetical order, and I don’t want to hear anything else about it.” Both their full names don’t fit, so they're abbreviated: _M. Hill, N. Romanoff_. She can’t be persuaded to list them by middle name ( _Alianovna_ being the only of Natasha’s names that would place her alphabetically first), so Natasha switches gears.

Libreville, Port Moresby, Guayaquil; Clint doesn’t catch on until they spend an interminable weekend watching a SHIELD scientist do absolutely nothing interesting in Thessaloniki. “I don’t know _what_ Coulson’s thinking, sending us on all these milk runs. I thought we were crushing it lately, and now we’re watching TV through a window.” He drops his binoculars in disgust and throws himself bodily onto the dusty couch. “Olusada could take this one, and he can’t even count to 50.”

“That’s rude,” Natasha says, watching through her own binoculars as the scientist across the street turn on a cooking show. “He can definitely make it to at least 100.” She looks over to where Clint sprawls morosely across the couch, like a fungus. For a sniper, he’s not all that good at staking places out, staying in one place like this for hours. Or, rather: he’s _good_ at it, but he clearly doesn’t like it. “Anyway,” she sighs, taking pity, “I asked for them. I need to get my mission success rate to 94 percent.”

Clint’s head shoots up like an aggravated gopher. “ _Why_ \--” he begins, but Clint’s not nearly as dumb as he likes to pretend, and the force of his sudden glare actually propels him upright. “God _damn_ \--Nat, are you fucking kidding me? I thought you were done with this.”

Despite herself, Natasha feels heat flush the back of her neck. “I'm done with the _record board_ ,” she carefully admits. “Or, more accurately, Davies says she won’t update it anymore. I’m just… moving the field of competition.”

“And the goalposts?” Natasha lifts one shoulder. Clint sighs. “What’s the _point_ of this, Nat? You know you don’t have to prove anything, right? To her or anyone else.”

Natasha scoffs. “It’s not that,” she promises. “I just like--” She likes getting a rise out of Hill when nobody else can. She likes calculating the slope of Hill’s scowl from across the cafeteria, and the delicate curl of her pale hands when Natasha’s name pushes hers off the record board. She likes the way Hill sights her target like there’s nothing else in the world, but then smiles at Natasha with all her teeth, like a shark. She likes--

Clint is still waiting. “I just like to win,” Natasha tells him, and pointedly turns her attention to the lesson on flambé taking place on the television across the street.

\---

**A list of competitions Natasha wins:**

_Baking  
_They each make two desserts and leave them in the break room on the 25th floor on a Friday morning. At the end of the day, Natasha’s double dark chocolate cupcakes and frosted sugar cookies are almost completely gone, while Maria’s bran muffins and whole wheat oatmeal raisin cookies have barely been touched. “But they’re _healthier_ ,” she insists to Natasha, completely perplexed.

“Dessert isn’t meant to be healthy,” Natasha tries to explain, but she eats a bran muffin to make Maria feel better.

 

 _Bowling  
_“This is the only form of entertainment we had in the Red Room,” Natasha tells Maria.

“Oh,” Maria says, her grip faltering on her neon orange bowling ball. “I didn’t--we can pick a different challenge--”

“Just kidding,” Natasha says, executing a perfect strike. “I’m just really fucking good.”

They’re cosmic bowling, and the neon lights press strange patterns into Maria’s dark hair. “You’re kind of an asshole, you know,” she says, but she smiles, faint and crooked.

 

 _Trivia  
_Clint insists that they each sit on either side of the team of SHIELD agents he’s gathered at the bar across the river from the Triskelion. This means that they spend the whole night hissing at each other over Brock Rumlow’s giant head whenever one of them takes the lead. Considering the eruption that occurs when Natasha upsets Maria’s lead on the very last question of the game, this is probably for the best.

 

 _Skee-ball  
_“I spend, like, _way_ too much time with Clint,” Natasha only sort of apologizes.

 

 _Charades  
_Clint gets scarily good at coming up with challenges. “I wrote out fifty things for you to act out,” he explains, missing the exchange of wary glances as he leads them into a conference room. “You’ll get thirty seconds at a time, and then switch. Whoever gets Olusada to guess more of them wins.”

“ _Olusada_?” they yelp in unison. The agent in question waves earnestly, then takes a beat to realize he’s just knocked his fresh cup of coffee onto his pants.

Clint sighs. “Or not.” He sticks his head out into the hall, craning around Olusada’s hastily retreating back. “Hey, Gospodinova, you busy?” He ushers in SHIELD’s newest agent, whom Natasha just so happened to train. Natasha smiles; Maria groans and thunks her head against the wall.

 

**A list of competitions Maria wins:**

_Darts  
_After winning seven consecutive rounds, Maria smirks and says, “I, too, have spent way too much time with Clint.”

 

 _Filing all paperwork on time  
_Really, it was never even a competition. “It’s honestly just so much easier to file the 31-A12 with the 14-89Q,” Maria says, leaning on the edge of Natasha’s desk. “Otherwise, you get stuck having to fill out the Acquisition-19T, which is just HR being dicks because they can.” Somehow, this has become a thing they do: checking in at the end of the week to tally points and discuss their standings in the office betting pool Clint thinks he’s hiding from them. This week, Maria’s up after completing not only this week’s paperwork, but that for the next week as well. “Clearing my desk is therapeutic,” she admits, tilting her face down and away, but not before Natasha catches the briefest flash of a smile.

 

 _Chopped (featuring Clint’s very sad pantry)  
_“In my defense,” Natasha says, looking at the mess in front of her, “Nobody _should_ be able to make anything good out of beer, old pizza, gummy bears, and half a leftover sandwich.” She’d really tried, but in the end, her plate looked like soggy mush, while Maria’s looked like good, greasy diner food.

“I thought about culinary school, Maria says, shrugging, as if it’s no big deal to make something edible out of Clint’s horrifying failed science experiment of a kitchen. “This is nothing,” she goes on. “Next time I roll some fresh pasta, I’ll have you over.”

“That means both of us, right?” Clint asks, banging his head on the fridge as he exits with extra beer.

“Not a chance,” Maria says, and taps her drink against Natasha’s with a wink that she can’t decipher.

 

 _Chubby Bunny  
_“I mean, what else are we going to do on this stakeout?” Maria asks. There’s a shine in her eyes that makes Natasha feel--that makes her want to suggest-- _something_ , something big and and confusing and alarming; something dangerously delicate. Resigned, she reaches into the bag of marshmallows Maria holds out and sharpens the soft edges of her gaze to flint. “Let it just be said, right now,” she points out, “that your mouth is way bigger than mine.”

Maria’s lips twist in a sort of oral shrug, completely characteristic and yet suddenly new and distracting, and privately, Natasha blames that for her loss.

 

 _Knitting  
_They’ve spent the better part of a week sitting on Natasha’s couch night after night, propped side by side with their feet on the coffee table, _America’s Next Top Model_ reruns on the TV. “This is stupid,” Maria announces, throwing down her knitting.

“Do I make fun of _your_ trash television choices?” Last time she’d been at Maria’s, she’d suffered through so many old episodes of _Jersey Shore_ that she’d had to go home and immediately shower.

“ _Yes_ ,” Maria says emphatically, but then clarifies, “This _competition_ is stupid. Why are we knitting for Clint? He doesn’t deserve two scarves.”

The first thing Natasha thinks is, _but we still have seven episodes left_. The second thing Natasha thinks is, _then what excuse do I have to invite you over_? The third thing Natasha thinks is, _we could knit for each other instead_ , is how she’d make Maria something blue, like the veins in the backs of her pale hands, something soft, like the way she only laughs at reality television. The fourth thing Natasha thinks is, _shit_.

“I know,” Maria says, electric eyes sparking beautiful mischief. “We’ll knit hats for Fury. He’s always complaining about his head being cold. After this season, though,” she reasons, settling back into the couch. “I have to know if Felicia wins.” She leans her head on Natasha’s shoulder. Her hair, when Natasha rests her cheek against it, is smooth, and smells like violets. Later, while Natasha is knitting Fury’s hat, she remembers this detail over and over, and every time, she drops a stitch.

 

**A competition they both lose:**

_Drinking competition  
_Natasha wakes up in an unfamiliar bed, fully clothed, feeling unequivocally like shit. It hurts to move. It hurts to _exist_. When her phone goes off, she nearly screams.

Someone else, someone burrowed deep under the covers Natasha threw off sometime in the night, _does_ scream, sort of. “Make it _stop_ ,” the voice says, a muffled, anguished wail. Natasha feels around for her phone to no avail before finally opening her eyes with great reluctance.

Huge mistake. Terrible. The room is bright and airy, distinctly neater and more minimalist than her cozy Adams Morgan walk up. She’d probably appreciate it more were the light not stabbing directly into her ocular cavity. As it is, she feels again for her phone, only to discover, with a distinctly sinking sensation, that there's a series of sequential smudges on the inside of her forearm that bear a concerning resemblance to tally marks.

 _You wouldn’t be that stupid_ , she thinks, finding her phone. There’s five notifications from Clint. She cringes. _Okay, you would be that stupid… but Maria._ She _wouldn’t be that stupid._

She opens the phone, reads the first text: [ _so last night was fun_ ] followed by a series of photos. She throws peanut shells at Maria. She arm wrestles Maria. They take shots. They proudly show off the tally marks marching up their arms. Maria’s hair falls loose around her ears, her arm slung around Natasha’s shoulders. _Oh no_ , Natasha thinks, scrolling down. There’s a video file, and she instinctively recoils as she presses play:

 

**A competition they both win:**

_Karaoke  
__Girls just wanna have fuh-un,_ Maria sings in Natasha’s face. They’re on the karaoke stage together, and from the flash of her arm as she gesticulates wildly, Natasha can see they’re up to twelve drinks. This is apparently the magic number that convinces otherwise stoic, responsible women such as themselves to get up on stage in front of what Natasha horrifiedly recognizes as _many_ of their coworkers and sing Cyndi Lauper together. It’s not awful, musically: their voices meld well, and they’ve cobbled together some sort of embarrassing dance.

She thinks that’s the worst of it, but no; of course they’re so competitive that they sing multiple songs, and of course Clint filmed them all for posterity. Maria sticks to the classics--Queen and Journey and a frankly hilarious air guitar-accompanied “Rock Lobster”--while Natasha bounces all over the place. _I want you to want me,_ she watches herself sing, _I need you to need me._ Then, _I really really really really really really like you, and I want you, do you want me, do you want me too?_ The videos aren’t quiet, and the other person in the bed is groaning more and more insistently, and yet Natasha watches herself point at Maria and sing: _Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up in the morning when the day is new?_ _And after having spent the day together, hold each other close the whole night through?_

“I’m going to actually murder you,” says the other person in the bed, who turns out to be an extremely miserable-looking Maria, “if you don’t turn that the fuck off.”

Natasha blinks at Clint’s last message. [  _you both definitely won_ ] he types, and then: [  _something you wanna talk about maybe?_ ] She’s too hungover to parse that. “Sorry,” she tells Maria, and wills herself to sleep until everything hurts less.

\---

It was always going to come down to this. They were always going to find themselves squaring up in a training ring, circling each other amid a hush of SHIELD agents well aware of what they’re about to witness.

It’s best of three, not that it really matters. All Natasha can think about is the way her skin electrifies whenever she and Maria are in the same room, whether or not the conversation is about the competition. Clint gives her a thumbs up across the ring, but what she’s really focusing on is the pale pink smirk Maria gives her as they pace around each other like jungle cats in a too-small cage. She tries out a smirk of her own, but it feels twisty and nervous, and she doesn’t know why. Ever since the karaoke night, Clint’s been trying to get her to admit that she _wants_ something, but she doesn’t know what that might be, and the only time she gets a wisp of an answer is when Maria walks by, an idea there and gone in a wake of violet shampoo.

 _Focus!_ The match starts, and Natasha quiets her confusion with action. Maria is tall ( _willowy,_ her brain unhelpfully provides), so she gets up close and slams with her shoulder, landing two quick hits before Maria pushes her away. Her next approach is rebuffed by a swing of Maria’s long legs, but she goes low on the next attack, aiming for the ankles and knocking Maria off her feet. A rapid maneuver, a dodge of a fist, and her knee presses into Maria’s sternum. “My point,” Natasha pants, oddly out of breath.

They stand; Maria jumps the second the referee steps back. Natasha is fast, but not fast enough to evade the reach of Maria’s long arms. She wrestles her way out of one hold, spins away from another--only to find Maria’s spun, too, and is waiting to swipe her feet out from under her. She goes down, rolling away just before Maria’s body can cover hers. The crowd groans, but Maria’s eyes blaze as she comes back to her feet; it’s like looking into the sun. This time, the attack is methodical and relentless. Maria dodges or shakes off every one of Natasha’s kicks and punches, taking advantage of one last jab to flip Natasha hard to the mat. She bends close as her knee settles on Natasha’s chest. “My point,” she murmurs, eyes still hot.

Natasha can’t remember the last time her blood felt this hot, the last time a fight made her stomach feel like a fireworks show. They tap fists again and she feels electric and staticky, a live wire that combusts against Maria’s cool glass of water. This is the deciding bout, and she throws herself into it, _punch kick swerve kick pivot dodge uppercut._ This is her rhythm, this is her flow; this smooth and ruthless takedown using everything she’s got. Her muscles sing, the electricity within her _hums_ \--

And as she holds Maria in a headlock, she smells the violet of her shampoo, and everything _clicks_ , so suddenly that she drops Maria and immediately steps back. In the half second reactionary period, two things happen: the red alert siren goes off, and Maria turns to Natasha, caught off guard. “What the hell was that?” Maria asks as their audience scrambles for their stations.

“The red alert, duh,” Natasha says shakily, and ducks out of the ring into the throngs of agents before Maria can pull her any further apart.

\---

Natasha and Clint get sent undercover to retrieve alien tech on Saint Edward’s Island, so it’s a month before she turns up at Maria’s door. There’s a scrape at her temple that’s still bleeding, and she’s definitely bruised a few ribs; she’s come straight from Medical, and maybe checked herself out against doctor’s advice.

“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be at the hospital,” Maria says. Her casual lean against the doorframe doesn’t quite hide the fact that she’s toying nervously with her fingernails.

Natasha shrugs. “I won,” she says. “I had to come tell you before you figured it out.”

Maria’s mouth falls open in an _O_ of outrage. “You won _what_ ,” she demands. “You haven’t won shit, Romanoff, unless it’s the ‘nearly getting yourself killed competition,’ which I definitely did _not_ sign up for, so--”

Natasha steps into Maria’s space, causing her to abruptly stop talking. “Not that,” she says. “I figured out why we--okay, well, why _I_ needed to beat you, which I think is coincidentally why _you_ were trying to beat me.” The only time they’ve been closer is when they fought, when Natasha hovered over Maria and bent close enough to realize how long her eyelashes were, how gently her cheeks were freckled, how much she wanted--

Maria sways into Natasha’s orbit. Her voices rises uncharacteristically as she asks, “And that reason would be?”

The words still hang off her lips as Natasha kisses her, sliding her hand to the back of Maria’s long, cool neck. If she’s startled, she doesn’t show it, instead cupping Natasha’s face in her own hands and kissing her back for a long, delicious minute, then another, and another, until they’re making out in Maria’s open doorway, sunlight streaming around them like a banner.

“Hold on,” Maria finally says, stepping back from where she’s trapped Natasha against the wall with her hips. “This doesn’t mean the competition is over.”

“But I won,” Natasha insists.

“You won the first round, maybe,” Maria concedes with a gleam in her eyes. “But just think of all the _other_ competitions we’ve just opened up for ourselves.”

“You can’t just--” Natasha begins, but Maria kisses her again, nibbling on her lip, and Natasha decides to enjoy the sweetness of victory and argue the point later.


End file.
